Power Platform ALM. Unmanaged solution pack from repo and then import as Managed solution doesn't work

[Gatwick]

I have been developing Azure Dev Ops pipelines for the last few weeks. Happily exporting Managed and Unmanaged solutions, storing .zipfiles, unpacking code storing in repo, building release and all that stuff. All fine.

I now try to pack code from an unmanaged solution into a .zip and import as managed but it always imports wrongly as unmanaged.

I have tried every combination of settings. Deleted every trace of the unmanaged solution from the target environment, published customisations from every level  and it still installs as unmanaged even though the logs say it's fine.

I then installed the solution manually as managed and ran the pipeline import which is rejected as it states that it is trying to install as unmanaged when the parameter is set as managed. 

Logs attached. I don't know what else to try so an idea would be appreciated. Cheers, Richard UK

[rexkenley]

This maybe your issue

/packagetype: {Unmanaged|Managed|Both} Optional. The type of package to process. The default value is Unmanaged. This argument may be omitted in most occasions because the package type can be read from inside the .zip file or component files. When extracting and Both is specified, managed and unmanaged solution .zip files must be present and are processed into a single folder. When packing and Both is specified, managed and unmanaged solution .zip files will be produced from one folder. For more information, see the section on working with managed and unmanaged solutions later in this topic.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-platform/alm/solution-packager-tool

[Gatwick]

Hi Rex, thanks for taking the trouble. My problem was expecting that the Import solution could accept an Unmanaged solution pack and import it as 'managed' with that box ticked but it doesn't work like that. I don't really know what that box is for. Unmanaged source can only be imported as Unmanaged. This is what I do now into a build environment then export it as managed. I never tried changing the managed/unmanaged switch to see if that would work but I understand that some components are formatted differently between Managed/Unmanaged so it might work, or not, or sometimes.   Cheers, Richard

[jdfeemster]

Researching GitHub Actions vs Azure Pipelines for use as the GitHub ALM lifecycle. Based on my initial searches, it would appear that Azure Pipelines is more mature than GitHub Actions, but it's not clear which has the best implementation, which is better supported and which (for a development team of six programmers) to use going forward. I would appreciate the groups opinions.

[alienwife]

Late to the topic, but I think it's still impossible to "convert" the solution. 

From the packager tool documentation: 

The format of a compressed solution file will be different based on its type, either managed or unmanaged. The SolutionPackager can process compressed solution files of either type. However, the tool can’t convert one type to another. The only way to convert solution files to a different type, for example from unmanaged to managed, is by importing the unmanaged solution .zip file into a Dataverse server and then exporting the solution as a managed solution.

Managed and unmanaged solutions

Still making us do extra work..